Jenova Rebirth
by Krista Perry
Summary: A short time after the events of Advent Children, Jenova sets events in motion that will once again draw Cloud and all his friends into battle - not just for survival, but for body, mind and soul.
1. Chapter 1

Jenova Rebirth

A Final Fantasy VII Fic

by Krista Perry

Chapter 1

* * *

The sun had long since set by the time Cloud finally pulled up on his motorcycle in front of Seventh Heaven, having completed his latest delivery. He paused to take in the darkened windows and the lit "Closed" sign. Sighing, he pulled into the side alley that led to the garage and back entrance.

In the silence that ensued after he shut down the engine, there was a distinct lack of voices calling to him in a welcome home greeting. Not unexpected, but still a little disappointing. He flipped open his phone as he walked up the stairs and entered the security code for the back door.

He got Tifa's voice mail - unsurprising considering how late it was. "Hey," he said, "I just got back, everything went fine. I'm gonna stick around for a while, and if no jobs turn up I'll join you and the kids at Gold Saucer in a day or two."

A tightness in his stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten since breakfast. But shower first. He didn't dare inhale too deeply for fear he'd choke on his own stench. On his return to Edge, he had taken his usual detour through the Midgar ruins and had indulged in a little monster cleanup in Sector 3. As a result, he was covered in what Marlene had termed "Monster Goop" - probably the most polite way of describing the nastiness that resulted in cleaving large ravening creatures in half, up close and personal-like.

And as for that old Shinra manufacturing warehouse... well, it was on the verge of collapsing anyway. But the resulting debris cloud coated him in filth from head to booted steel-tipped toe. He was debating whether or not to make the effort to clean his leathers, or just get out the new ones Tifa and bought for him and start fresh, when the blissful sting of hot water hit his bare shoulders and he decided not to think about anything at all for a little while as the water and steam washed it all away.

The new leathers, he decided later, scrubbing his hair dry with a towel as he looked at the discarded pile of clothing on floor. Monster goop aside, they had definitely seen better days. Apparently Tifa thought so as well, since she had recently bought their replacements, and Cloud suddenly realized that the purchase may have been a deliberate hint that it was more than time to retire the old battle gear. Half smiling at the thought, he retrieved the silver wolf's head emblem from his battered, slimed leathers, wrapped the remains in a plastic bag, and unceremoniously tossed the bundle in the garbage.

Dinner consisted of three WRO-issued ration bars washed down with a half gallon of milk. Cloud ate the ration bars somewhat mournfully, knowing that they were still better than anything he might attempt to cook from the full pantry.

New leather was notoriously creaky until it was broken in so, after dinner, he killed some time thoroughly rubbing in a good coat of oil. By the time he was done, he was finally to the point where he could acknowledge his own weariness and could attempt to sleep in the unnatural stillness that filled his home in the absence of his family.

Sleep, however, was interrupted in the early morning hours by a tremor that shook Seventh Heaven so hard he could hear the glasses rattling in the bar downstairs. He sat up in bed, frowning. That didn't' feel like the usual ever-unstable-and-shifting-Midgar tremors that frequently shook Edge. He couldn't put his finger on what bothered him, but it was enough that he decided to get out of bed and investigate.

He had just finished pulling on his work clothes, creaky new leather and all, when someone knocked at the back delivery door. He quickly went to answer, thinking it was probably one of the local kids who had been scared by the earthquake. Opening the door, he saw that it was indeed a kid, but not one he knew. Some boy, maybe 14 or 15 years old, and bearing flowers no less. The kid's shirt declared that he worked for Fiona's Floral, with the emblazoned slogan, "Say it with flowers!"

"Mr. Strife?" the kid asked, and there was more than a slight hint of awe in his eyes as he held out the flowers and a delivery slip attached to a small clip board.

Cloud nodded. He was still getting used to being recognized by most of the town, but he figured the best policy was to just ignore it and try not let it bother him, even if the whole concept of him being an object of hero worship bothered him more than he dared confess. _Sure, I saved the planet_, he thought, _but it's kind of hard for me to pat myself on the back for it when I'm the one who put in danger in the first place._ Okay, so yes, he had been messed up in the head. But somehow that didn't strike him as a good enough excuse for what he did at the Northern Crater, handing the Black Materia over to Sephiroth and bringing Meteor down on them all...

He closed his eyes briefly, forcibly cutting off the thought before it could lead him down the old familiar path of self-loathing. After all, hadn't he _just_ promised Tifa and Marlene that he wouldn't let the past keep dragging him down?

_Sometimes easier said than done..._

He took the flowers from the kid - some odd blue and yellow blossoms he didn't recognize. There wasn't a card, but he suspected they might be from Tifa. He sure hoped they weren't from some secret admirer. Sighing, he signed the slip and said, "You do realize it's almost three in the morning, right?"

"Yes sir," the kid answered, "but the customer paid extra to have them delivered now."

"Right now? This very moment?" Cloud asked. The kid nodded. Well, that certainly wasn't usual, and didn't sound like Tifa's style either. Cloud eyed the flowers with suspicion. "Do you know who this customer is?"

The kid shook his head. "Anonymous," he said. For a moment it looked like he was going to say more, but then he closed his mouth, accepting the clip board as Cloud handed it back to him.

Cloud held on to the clip board instead of letting it go. "What were you about to tell me before you changed your mind?" he asked.

The kid looked torn for a moment, but then sighed. "The boss says it's unprofessional to talk about stuff like this with people we deliver flowers to."

Cloud smiled a little, let go of the clip board and said, "I won't tell if you won't. Stuff like what?"

"Well..." The kid looked uncomfortable. "I don't think whoever sent the flowers likes you very much. Do you know what those flowers mean?"

Cloud knew from Aeris that certain flowers had certain meanings. Someone was sending him a threatening message with flowers? "What do these mean?" he asked.

"Well, the blue flowers are lobelia, which stand for, uh, really strong hatred. And the yellow flowers are trefoil, which usually stand for revenge."

Cloud raised his eyebrows. "Usually?"

"Er... always," the kid conceded.

Cloud felt amused and perplexed at the same time. "You get a lot of three-a.m. trefoil revenge orders?"

The kid snorted. "No sir."

Cloud chuckled ruefully. "Great, so basically someone is out to get me, and they decided to tell me by sending me flowers in the middle of the night." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out ten gil to tip the kid. "Thanks," he said, stepping out the door and locking it behind him.

"What are you going to do?" the kid asked.

"About this?" Cloud shrugged and tossed the flowers to the ground. "Nothing, for now. If someone wants to get some kind of revenge on me, they'll have to do a little better than sending me flowers. It was kind of thoughtful of them to give me a heads-up, though."

The kid grinned, and Cloud smiled back before turning and heading for his bike parked by the garage.

"Where are you going?" the kid called after him, and just then another tremor hit, this one stronger than the first. Cloud paused as it suddenly dawned on him that the flowers and the tremors might actually be related. Maybe there was more to this revenge thing than just a few decidedly non-scary blooms.

"Just going for a ride." He slid on to the seat of his bike, starting it with the fingerprint key pad. He revved the engine and felt the comforting thrum vibrate through his muscles. "See you around." The kid waved at him as he sped out of the back alley toward the street.

Cloud made sure to run over the flowers on his way.

* * *

Reeve was not a superstitious man. He was a man of science, of logic, and of sanity.

Well, maybe not complete sanity, he mused, tearing his bleary eyes away from his glowing computer monitor, and glancing around at the gloom of the basement library. He knew of very few sane men who would willingly come to Nibelheim these days, let alone set up shop for a few months in the Shinra Mansion, the creepy monument to countless Shinra monstrosities.

Well, it was high time he did something to remedy at least a few of those monstrosities. The WRO had finally settled into an organization that didn't require his constant presence to keep everything on track. And if coming to an abandoned ghost town and living in an eerie, decrepit mansion, all so he could be near the last functioning Mako reactor on the planet while he worked on his plans to replace Mako energy with planet-friendly, and affordable solar power... so be it.

Looking at his solar battery prototype, sitting atop a cluttered pile of books and equipment, he scowled. It still wasn't saving up enough power to run an average household's electrical needs through a single night. Not acceptable. Not acceptable at all.

That was the problem with solar power - it only worked well when the sun was out, or if you were in space. At night or on cloudy days, unless you had a powerful battery that had previously managed to store up enough solar power to keep things running through a shortage of sunlight, you were out of luck. He had to make a battery that was not only powerful enough, but also cheap enough to make so that everyone could afford one.

Easier said than done.

Groaning, Reeve ran a hand through his hair. Ugh. He needed a shower. And a shave. And food. And, quite possibly, sleep. What time was it, anyway? Come to think of it... what day was it?

Okay, maybe he wasn't quite as sane as he liked to think. Back in Shinra's glory days, he had always held a certain amount of satisfaction over being the most sane person in the Shinra Hierarchy - though, really, that wasn't saying much.

There had been a time, long ago, when he was young and idealistic, that he had been sure that Shinra would put his talents to good use. He was a master at computer systems, and building technology from the ground up. At the tender age of 17, he was recognized as the leading scientist in robotics and artificial intelligence development - not his only area of expertise, but by far his favorite.

Shinra had snatched him up right away, and he had moved up the ranks with ease by sheer force of talent, until he found himself at the head of Shinra Weapons Development. That hadn't lasted long, though. Scarlet had moved in, and proved herself far better adapted to creating killing machines than he was, and thus he found himself at the head of Urban Research and Development instead.

That had been a thoroughly frustrating job. It seemed that whenever he tried to put forth a plan for improving the general living conditions for the people, both above and below the plate, he was blocked at every turn by either Palmer, Heideggar, Scarlet, and even President Shinra himself. Hojo, thank goodness, just didn't give a damn either way, too obsessed with his own projects to cause him much trouble.

And then President Shinra went batshit insane and decided to drop the plate on the Sector 7 slums.

That had been the moment of revelation for him. The moment of waking up. The moment when he realized that it was time to stop rationalizing away the corruption he saw in Shinra on a daily basis. The corruption he participated in, and enabled with his own talent. That was the moment he knew it was time to leave.

But you couldn't just walk away from Shinra. Not with all knowledge he had of Shinra's inner workings; not with the secrets he was privy to. If he tried to walk away, he would be dead before the end of the week, of that he had no doubt. He had seen it happen before - to the previous head of Urban Research and Development, as a matter of fact. Milton had reached the breaking point long before he had, and had resigned in a spectacular display of temper. His body was found over the course of several weeks, and in several different sections of Midgar.

So when he finally had enough, and desperately wanted to walk away, Reeve, one of the most powerful men on the planet, member of the Shinra Third Tier, second only to President Shinra and his son Rufus, suddenly found himself completely trapped in a miserable prison of his own making, without hope of escape.

Then, shortly after the Sector 7 plate dropped, Cloud and his friends showed up. They stormed the Shinra building to rescue Aeris, faced and defeated Shinra security, Shinra technology, the Turks, and even Rufus himself... and suddenly Reeve had hope.

And, better yet, he had a plan.

"Good morning, Reeve," a cheerful, disembodied voice said, as Reeve entered his lab and sealed the meter-thick steel door behind him. "What do you have planned for today? More economic projections? Those are so depressing. Can we do something else instead?"

Reeve picked his way through the maze of scattered computers and equipment and slid into his well-worn leather chair in front of his massive U-shaped desk. The desk supported eight monitors, all of which were displaying variations of "Good morning, Reeve!" "Welcome back, Reeve!" and other enthusiastic greetings, except for the last monitor on the right, which was swiftly flipping through a screen saver composed entirely of pictures of kittens. Reeve smiled and shook his head. For some strange reason he had yet to comprehend, his masterpiece creation of artificial intelligence - the pinnacle of all his knowledge and hard work - had developed an almost obsessive fondness for cats ever since he brought his own cat, Klunk, into the lab several weeks ago.

"Good morning, Cait-Sith," he responded, picking at a hole in the leather on his arm rest. He briefly considered covering the hole with duct tape before it got worse, then promptly forgot about it. "No economic projections today. Today is something special. Today we're going to design you a body."

There was silence from the AI for a moment, and then, from the speakers, a whispered, "Really?"

Reeve nodded, then winced as Cait-Sith cheered at the top of his synthetic voice. "Hey, not so loud," he said. "Remember how you blew out the speakers last time?"

"Sorry," Cait-Sith said cheerfully, not sounding sorry at all.

Reeve leaned over and plucked a disc out of his briefcase. "Here," he said, sliding it into the closest drive. "I want you to look at these designs and tell me if you like any of them."

"I've already picked one," said Cait-Sith.

Reeve blinked. "That fast?" he said, then shrugged. "Which one?

The picture that suddenly displayed on all eight of his monitors made him blink again.

"Um... Cait-Sith? This isn't a design on the disk. In fact, this isn't a design at all. This is just... just something I drew on a whim."

It was actually something he had sketched in the margins of his notes while he was at the last Third Tier meeting, while Heideggar was rambling on and on about... something. Rather than die of boredom, he had drawn a rough doodle of his cat, Klunk, riding on the back of a rather large, overstuffed Moogle. He had drawn the cat wearing a red cape, and a little gold crown. It seemed appropriate at the time, because of Klunk's feline tendency to continually remind him of who was really in charge at home.

Cait-Sith must have seen the sketch somehow, before he put his notes through the shredder. The AI was, after all, a notorious snoop.

"I know it's not a design on the disc," Cait-Sith replied. "But I like it. That's what I want my body to look like."

"But... but..." Reeve stopped; he hated it when he got so flustered that he started stuttering. "Did you even look at the designs on the disk? I was up all night making those." He had always envisioned that Cait-Sith's robotic body would be something sleek and cool and, well, humanoid, at least. "Don't you think those designs look... well... less... um..."

"Less what?" the AI asked.

Reeve sighed. "Cait, that picture... it's a cat riding a moogle."

"I know," Cait-Sith said, synthetic voice practically vibrating with enthusiasm. "Isn't it great?"

Reeve stifled a groan. He knew his prize creation well enough to know that arguing with him further on this would only make the AI sad. He really didn't want to deal with a mopey Cait-Sith. The AI had perfected a sulk that would put any human child to shame.

But then, if this was what Cait-Sith really wanted, why not? And why couldn't he make the design work to his advantage somehow?

Come to think of it, Cloud and his friends seemed the soft-hearted type. Rather than his "I'm a bad-ass android" designs, this might be just the thing...

"Well... okay," Reeve agreed, and covered his ears as Cait-Sith's yelp of joy reverberated through the speakers. "Gah," he muttered, "I'll have to remember to limit the body's voice volume control."

"So," Cait-Sith asked, once he had settled down a bit, "when I get my body, will I get to go anywhere I want?"

"Well, yes, eventually," Reeve said. "But not right away, unfortunately. First, you and I will be working on a top secret project together - something no one must know about, not even President Rufus. Especially not President Rufus."

"Ooh, a top secret project?" Cait-Sith sounded intrigued. "What is it?"

Reeve pulled out another disc - one that had profile information on a certain group of people: Cloud Strife, Aeris Gainsborough, Tifa Lockheart, Red XIII, and Barrett Wallace.

"Take a look at this," he said, sliding the disc into a drive. "You're going to be doing a bit of spy work for me..."

A cold, wet nose against Reeve's closed eyelid startled him awake, and he jerked back to see Klunk sitting on his keyboard, eyeing him balefully. "Ungh... Cait-Sith, what time is it? Did I forget to feed Klunk again?"

No answer, of course, and Reeve suddenly remembered where and when he was. Nibelheim. Shinra Mansion basement, working on that thrice-damned solar battery. And Cait-Sith was gone.

After spending all that time with Cloud, Aeris, Tifa and the others, when the adventure was over, Cait-Sith had decided to go off on his own and explore. They still kept in contact, much like they did during their stint as double agent spies against Shinra. Last Reeve had checked, just a few days ago, Cait-Sith was back at Gold Saucer, and doing well.

Klunk meowed loudly, and butted his head against Reeve's nose. "Okay, okay," Reeve said, getting to his feet, and stretching out the kink in his back. "Food, right?" He reached out to pet his cat, but Klunk hopped away, then looked back at him, meowing in a strange, chittering, anxious yowl that the cat usually reserved for when he saw a bird out the window that he couldn't chase.

"Hey, what's the matter?" Reeve asked. Klunk was acting awfully strange, Well... stranger than usual.

And then the earthquake hit.

The whole mansion shook. Reeve staggered, grabbing on to his desk, and then crawling under it as books fell from the shelves, computer equipment toppled over, and debris fell from the ceiling. "Klunk!" he yelled, over the roar of the earthquake, but the cat had already made himself scarce. Reeve desperately hoped that Klunk didn't get hurt.

More than that, though, as minutes crept by and the earth continued to shake violently, he hoped that the mountain next to the Shinra Mansion didn't fall on top of it. The basement lab wasn't actually part of the mansion - it was dug deep into the bowels of the mountain itself - but if the mountain fell, this underground lab could easily become his tomb.

Then, before his thoughts could take an even darker turn, the earthquake was over.

Reeve crawled out from under the desk, coughing in the dusty air. "Klunk!" he called, and to his relief, was answered by a meow not far away. He caught a glimpse of the spooked cat running down the hallway - dusty, but apparently none the worse for wear.

"Okay, what the hell just happened?" Reeve wondered aloud. Time to find out.

The first thing on the agenda was to go outside and assess the damage - or try to anyway. He hadn't heard the mountain fall, but apparently the shaking had been bad enough to completely destroy the rotting wooden spiral staircase that led down to the underground cavern, which led to the lab and the library. It was a good thing that, weeks earlier, he had decided to bypass the dangerous staircase altogether and install a sturdy metal ladder, or, fallen mountain or no fallen mountain, he would have been completely trapped. As it was, he had to dig through the remains of the wooden staircase to reach the ladder so that he could climb out, earning a handful of splinters in the process.

The rest of the mansion seemed to be mostly intact, to his amazement, aside from cracked plaster and one hole in the roof of the atrium room. After stepping outside and catching a glimpse of much-missed daylight, and seeing that the vacant town of Nibelheim was still intact, he went back down to the lab and immediately sent several quick emails to his assistants.

A few minutes later, he received a response from Brinley, the man he had left in charge of his lab in Edge. The terse email informed him that the earthquake had been felt in Edge as well, causing minor damage. Reports were also coming in from as far away as Mideel, Wutai, and the Icicle Inn.

Reeve's bad feeling about it deepened. A world-wide earthquake? What was it this time? More Weapons from the planet? Something worse?

_I'm going to wrap things up here as quick as I can, then I'm taking the helicopter back to Costa del Sol and hopping on the next boat to Junon_, Reeve wrote back to Brinley. _I'll email you when I get there, but if you could have a chopper ready to pick me up, to take me back to Edge, I'd appreciate it._

As he sent off the email, he looked ruefully over at his debris-covered solar battery. If there was another Sephiroth-sized disaster on the horizon - and he suspected there was if the gnawing trepidation in his gut was any indication - solar power was just going to have to wait.

* * *

_Free..._

_She pushed herself to her feet unsteadily – then paused. This would not do. She closed her eyes, reaching back through millennia to find the memory of walking with her own flesh and blood legs. This memory from before they tricked her, trapped her, sealed her within stone. And then, having found it, she straightened without tremor, lifting her head regally, shattered crystal shards falling from her hair and singing a cacophony as they hit the floor._

_She watched through eyes not her own, felt what this body felt... or rather, it was almost the other way around. And soon, there would be no "almost" about it._

_This abode of flesh and blood, this body called Lucrecia which had housed her cells for so many years that it was now impossible to know where the human ended and she began... this body would be her avatar. _

_Tonight, it would begin._

* * *

To Reeve's dismay, wrapping things up at the Shinra Mansion took longer than expected. Being a Shinra executive for 15 years had made him more than a tad paranoid about leaving his projects out where anyone curious, brave or stupid enough to encroach on his territory could just stumble on them. Not that his solar battery research was anything top secret... but old habits died hard.

Especially since, on top of his own rather benign research, the basement was crammed to the brim with Hojo's old research projects, and books upon books of detailed notes on the Jenova Project. There were research reports going all the way back to Professor Gast's first studies on the Ancients. The most recent records, however, were all Hojo's. Detailed accounts of the horrifying, inhumane experiments performed on the surviving men, women and children of the Nibelheim Massacre - most notably, SOLDIER 1st Class Zack Fair and Cadet Cloud Strife. And all reported with cold, clinical detachment.

Reeve had known Zack by reputation only, and so had no real emotional attachment to him. But Cloud was a friend. The part of Reeve that was a scientist devoured Hojo's notes with morbid fascination. The part of him that was Cloud's friend went and puked his guts out afterwards, and then lay trembling, exhausted and red-eyed, on the cobblestone floor until Klunk came, meowed anxiously, then curled up against him in his feline way of offering comfort.

He had mastered stoicism in the face of terrible happenings, and had long practice at burying guilt. But here, he was alone. There was no one around; no need to wear the familiar mask of apathy. No need to worry about who was watching, who might see him in a moment of weakness that could then be used against him. His breakdown might have shamed him when he was younger and full of pride, but now, he embraced it as a sign of his still-existent humanity. He considered that no small thing, after 15 years of chumming side by side with some of the craziest megalomaniacs ever to walk the planet.

So, his first week at the mansion, after going through all the research notes, Reeve ended up "cleaning house." The cylinders that had held Cloud and Zack as prisoners for five years were the first things to go. Being face to face with the very instruments of torture that had nearly destroyed his young friend's soul, day in and day out... it took a harder man than him to endure such a thing. He moved the cylinders, along with the rest of Hojo's equipment, to the coffin room at the other end of the cavern, locked the door, and never went back in.

Then, during his second week at the mansion, while moving shelves around in the library to make more space for his computer equipment, he found Hojo's secret room. A room not on the Shinra mansion blueprints. It was in this room, behind the camouflaged door sealed with codes that took him at least a half hour to crack, that Reeve discovered the side of Hojo's experiments that were secret to everyone but Hojo.

Reeve had always suspected that Hojo had his own agenda, above and beyond the interests of Shinra. The contents of the room confirmed it. Aside from mention of a secret lab located somewhere outside of Junon (something he would have to investigate in the future), he found further notes and journals on the Jenova Project.

Of most interest to him were Hojo's personal notes on Cloud - how the man had come to despise the boy, and at the same time, place him on a twisted pedestal; for Cloud was the one who had apparently killed Sephiroth, the man who was supposed to be Jenova's perfect receptacle and emissary. From what Reeve gathered from the notes, Hojo hated Cloud for that, and yet, in Hojo's eyes, only the one who was strong enough to kill Sephiroth could take his place.

And thus Hojo worked tirelessly for five years to turn Cloud's body into something worthy of being Sephiroth's replacement... and yet at the same time, Hojo used every mental torture in the book to destroy the boy's mind and sense of self, so that Cloud could offer no resistance when Jenova decided to pull the strings.

Lucky for Cloud, she never did, because, unbeknownst to Hojo, Sephiroth was still alive.

Reeve wondered how much of Hojo's personal Jenova-glorifying agenda Cloud knew of, or remembered. He wondered if Cloud knew just how much Hojo was out to get him, for killing Sephiroth. Reeve thought about sharing this discovery with him... then decided the better of it. Hojo was dead. The kid was trying to recover from his soul-shattering ordeal, and had managed a decent job of it. The last thing he needed was for Reeve to show up resurrecting ghosts best laid to rest.

So Reeve sealed the room back up, put the bookshelves back into place, and got to work on his own projects.

Now, some six months worth of work and clutter later, Reeve was finding yet another massive clean-up job on his hands before he could head back to Edge and personally investigate the quake. Most of his work consisted of securing the Shinra Mansion against anyone, or any group of people, who might decide that obtaining Shinra secrets best left buried was worth braving the Mako monsters that prowled the Nibelheim area.

And in the meantime, his assistants in Edge kept sending him bad news.

* * *

To: Reeve (reeve )

From: Alan Brinley (abrinley )

Subject: Old ShinRa Secrets?

-Beginning Transmission-

Hey Boss.

We've pinpointed the epicenter of the quake. It originated approximately 80 miles southeast of Nibelheim at the north end of the crater lake. I tried to look up some information on the area, but, interestingly enough, I ran into several layers of black ice security around any file that seemed like it might prove enlightening. Even more interesting, that ice has the distinct feel of your handiwork about it.

Anything you feel like sharing?

Alan Brinley

WRO Science and Research Division

-End Transmission-

* * *

To: Alan Brinley (abrinley )

From: Reeve (reeve )

Subject: re: Old ShinRa Secrets?

-Beginning Transmission-

Anything you feel like sharing?

Yes. But not now. In person, preferably, once I get back to Edge. In the meantime, prepare to deploy WRO Troops 7, 12 and 18 to the Western Continent. Mission orders to be forthcoming.

Thank you for your hard work. Please keep me updated. I'm working on securing this hell-hole and getting out of here as fast as I can, but it may be a day or two before I can make it to Costa del Sol.

-Reeve

-End Transmission-

* * *

Reeve stared at his computer screen for a long moment after sending off his response email. He rubbed at his eyes, feeling the weariness of the past six months settling on him like a shroud.

Then, taking a few deep breaths in an effort to pull himself together, he pulled out his PHS and, being the paranoid bastard that he was, spent a few minutes encrypting his signal before finally making the call.

He got voice mail. Not surprising, and just as well.

"Vincent," he said, his voice steady due to long practice. "This is Reeve. You are probably aware of the recent earthquake that was felt all over the planet. Apparently it originated from the northern shore of the crater lake southeast of Nibelheim. I need to investigate, but since you have... personal ties to the sole inhabitant of the crystal cave on the north shore, I thought it best that I counsel with you first before deploying WRO troops. Please contact me as soon as you can."

Ending the call, Reeve looked around at the debris-covered Shinra Mansion basement laboratory, and wondered, dismally, what new cataclysm was looming thanks to the dark deeds of the past that, in spite of all his efforts, refused to fade away.


	2. Chapter 2

Jenova Rebirth

A Final Fantasy VII Fic

by Krista Perry

* * *

Chapter 2

* * *

Later that day, when the implications of the tremors that Vincent felt shortly after leaving the Bone Village were made clear, he would recall walking through the Sleeping Forest, feeling the quake briefly shifting the world beneath his feet, and then shrugging off its significance.

Now, though, the mild tremors were the furthest thing from Vincent's mind as he knelt at the edge of the lake. The still waters reflected shimmering white trees, luminescent with the old power that still lingered in this place even after all this time, and the great organic shell structure that hid a sacred altar beneath.

The waters appeared clear, free of the black taint spread by the Sephiroth remnant Kadaj when he had entered its depths just a few months ago. But appearances could be deceiving, Vincent knew, and he wanted to be sure. Just in case, he had a vial of water from Aeris' church. He had no intention of inadvertently infecting himself with Geostigma without having the cure on hand.

He reached out, cupped the water in his gloved hand, brought it to his lips, and drank.

Pure again. Free of the taint of "Jenova's memetic legacy," it seemed. Whether someone came before him to repair the damage or whether Aeris somehow did the job herself from within the Lifestream, he had no way of knowing.

Not that it mattered how it happened. He was glad. Over the past two years since Meteor, Vincent found himself returning to the Forgotten City again and again. It was one of the few places on the planet where he felt a measure of peace; where the restless monsters within him eased away from the forefront of his mind and he could almost remember what it felt to be wholly human.

When the Remnants came, they, like Sephiroth before them, brought death and ruination to this place. Instead of peace, the beasts within stirred to the surface as Vincent found himself playing rescuer; first to Tseng and Elena, and later, to Cloud, much to his consternation.

But now... no one to rescue this time. No catastrophes to overcome. No company, however well-meaning, to remind him of just how _other_ he had become. All was as it should be.

He was sitting against a tree by the shore of the lake, deeply absorbed in the task of cleaning and oiling his three-barreled handgun, Cerberus, when his cell phone rang. Barely suppressing a sigh of irritation, he ignored it, wishing once again that he had forgone purchasing the annoyance at all. Yuffie had started calling to check on him every so often until, in a moment borne as much from desperation as irritation, he had finally contacted Cloud and asked him to relay a message to the exuberant ninja girl: She was not allowed to call his phone any more. Cloud had agreed to let Yuffie know, although the barest hint of amusement in his voice had been disconcerting.

Cloud was true to his word and had indeed relayed the message. And now, instead of every once in a while, Yuffie's calls came at least once a day. "If you think for one minute that I'm going to let you push your friends away and vanish off into the night, you've got another think coming," she often righteously proclaimed in the voice mails she inevitably left in lieu of conversation. As his phone continued to ring, Vincent glanced at the mirror surface of the lake and pondered sending it to the bottom to keep Cloud's old phone company.

Finally the ringing stopped. Still, Vincent hesitated in resuming his task, knowing that any moment now...

And there it was - the chime that announced he had yet another voice mail.

The daily interruption safely behind him, Vincent resumed cleaning Cerberus. When he finished, he decided to do maintenance on his rifle, Hydra and his machine gun, Griffon, just for good measure.

It wasn't until Cerberus was back in its holster, and his other firearms were safely packed away into his few belongings, that he finally glanced at his phone.

He blinked in surprise. Not Yuffie, but Reeve? What could he possibly want? Surely nothing good, since Vincent was relatively sure that the former Shinra/current head of the WRO wouldn't call unless something was wrong.

Vincent grimaced slightly, realizing that he would have to wade through at least a week of voice mails from Yuffie before getting to Reeve's message, so instead he flipped open his phone and returned Reeve's call.

Reeve answered on the first ring. "Vincent? Did you get my message?" The urgency in his tone was unsettling.

"No," Vincent replied, inwardly steeling himself. "I saw that you had called. What's going on?"

As Reeve filled him in on the strange earthquake and the location of its epicenter, Vincent felt his skin go cold. Fear, and a terrible burning hope warred within him.

_Lucrecia? _

"Thank you for contacting me," Vincent said. "I will go to the cave immediately, and I will let you know what action needs to be taken. If any," he added.

"I appreciate it, Vincent," Reeve said.

Vincent ended the call, musing that, for once, his phone was serving its intended purpose. He hesitated only a moment before dialing another number programed into his contacts.

This time his call was answered on the fifth ring, with a distinct lack of urgency. "Vincent? That you? I'll be damned! Didn't think I'd be hearing from you for a while yet. How the hell are ya?"

"Cid," Vincent said. "I need a ride. How soon can you get to the Forgotten City?"

* * *

As Cloud sped away from 7th Heaven, contemplating the disturbing 3 a.m. flower delivery, he couldn't help but notice how down-to-the-bone exhausted he felt for some reason.

_For some reason. Right, _he thought_._ Ever since his resolution to not dwell on the past and let it drag him down... well, apparently his own subconscious wasn't quite ready to make the same commitment. The nightmares... memories... whatever the hell they were... they were getting pretty bad. So bad that he was starting to dread sleep, and cherish any excuse to avoid it.

Excuses like earthquakes and ominous flower deliveries in the middle of the night, for example.

And even though he didn't require as much sleep as the average person, he could feel that the sleep deprivation was starting to take its toll. He was starting to feel hyper-aware of his own inner workings, and when it was really bad, he would start hearing fragments of voices - all his own – murmuring in the back of his mind. _And let's face it_, he thought grimly. _It doesn't take a genius to know that's not a good thing_.

Someone had once told him - probably Zack - that sanity was only the ability to ignore the voices in your head, or at least the ability to channel them into something productive. That, however, was before Hojo and his experiments made the voices real.

Cloud knew that, even on his best days, his memory of his own past was fractured and full of holes. Over two years ago in the Lifestream, Tifa had helped him gather the shattered fragments of his mind, each fragment having taken on a life of its own, and together they had pieced him back into a semblance of his real self – whole enough, at least, to be able to stand against Sephiroth's lies and illusions.

There were still quite a few pieces of his life missing, but he now knew better than to actively try to remedy the situation. Whenever he had gone poking around in his own mind, trying to make the random pieces fit, he had always, without fail, resurrected a memory - cold and bright as the edge of a scalpel - from his five year stint as Hojo's lab rat. The headaches, shaking, cold sweats, retching and phantom pains that always accompanied such a memory were just an added bonus.

So he just left his memory alone. If a memory surfaced on its own, he would deal with it, but he wasn't about to poke his sleeping demons with a stick unless he absolutely had to.

In the meantime, whenever Cloud started feeling the gaps in his memory a bit too keenly, he fell back onto the few things that he knew for sure: He was Cloud Strife, of Nibelheim. Not Zack, not a failed lab experiment created by Hojo. He had real friends, and a real life that he was living in the here-and-now that mattered far more than a nightmarish past best forgotten. And, most of all, he sure as hell wasn't anyone's puppet.

As Cloud sped through the streets of the city on his bike, repeating that mantra of sanity in his head, he noticed that there were quite a few lights on inside the buildings he passed. Apparently he wasn't the only one awake because of the tremors. With this in mind, he settled on a course of action.

At the edge of the city, not far from the ruins of Midgar, a group of street kids had bonded together to form their own makeshift family. These were the kids who refused to go to any of the WRO sponsored orphanages, determined to make their own way in the world. Cloud had learned of them from Denzel; apparently Denzel had once been friends with the group's leader, a boy named Rix. All of the kids were quite clever and self sufficient. They had made their own surprisingly sturdy homes from the scrap they salvaged from the ruins, including a massive section of steel pipe that looked like it had once been a part of a Mako reactor drainage system. It was about fifteen feet in diameter, and the kids had transformed it into a makeshift common room for them to share.

Since the quake had managed to rattle even him a bit, Cloud figured he would check on them and make sure they were all okay. And then afterward, perhaps he should drag his sorry ass over to Aeris' church and rest – at least until his head felt screwed on straight again. The voices in his mind would quiet, as they always did in that particular spot, and maybe then he would be able to sleep without dreams, without nightmarish memories. Then he could go back home.

And since Tifa was out of town, she didn't have to know about any of it. Just as well. He didn't think he could face her disappointment if she discovered that he wasn't as together as he pretended to be.

Apparently the kids were awake, or the sound of his bike alerted them to his approach, because Rix was already outside to meet him as he pulled up.

"Cloud!" Rix waved him over as he parked the bike. "Man, it's the middle of the night. What are you doing here?"

_Oh, just running away from myself_, Cloud didn't say. He glanced around, checking for any immediate signs of structural damage in the little community. "Did you feel that quake earlier?" he asked, glad, at least, that the kids' homes seemed intact.

Rix smirked. "Yeah, we did. That's why everyone's hanging out in there." He pointed at the pipe. "Come on, we heard you coming and they're all waiting for you."

A sturdy water-proof tarp draped over the pipe opening served as a makeshift door. Cloud pulled the tarp back and peered into the pipe's innards. Strings of lights attached to the ceiling served as an adequate source of illumination, and as he looked around, Cloud saw a couple of new faces he didn't recognize - two boys, probably brothers from their appearance, looked back at him with undisguised awe. The rest of the kids were, thankfully, suitably jaded to his presence.

"Hey," he said by way of greeting, and he was met with waves and smiles, while the youngest one, a feisty seven year old girl named Jen, jumped up, ran to him, and threw her arms around his legs. Cloud grunted from the impact, but smiled and put his hand on her head. "Is everyone okay?" he asked.

"The quake didn't do anything except wake everyone up," Rix answered, coming in behind him. "Everyone is fine. Except for Shyla, who sprained her ankle yesterday."

Cloud looked over at the girl, who was sitting against the curved inner wall of the pipe, a book in her lap, her bandaged foot elevated on a pillow.

Cloud gently extricated himself from Jen's greeting hug, and went and knelt next to Shyla. "So," he said. "How did this happen?"

Shyla shrugged. "You know that big wall over by the road to the ruins?"

Cloud frowned. "You didn't," he said.

"I did," she said, grinning. "I jumped off okay, but I kind of stuck the landing."

Cloud snorted, shaking his head as he reached inside himself for that warm, tingling connection with his slotted materia, then cast a mild Cure spell.

Warm, shimmering green light filled the pipe, and then faded away. "There," said Cloud. "How do you feel?"

Shyla wiggled her bandaged foot, rotating her ankle, and smiled. "Hungry," she said.

Cloud got to his feet. "Well, you're in luck then," he said, "'cause I happen to know of a food shipment that just came in from Wutai. I can drop some off for breakfast." _But first_, he thought, _the church_. He was undeniably weary, and the faint, unintelligible whispers in his mind were starting to make him feel like he had a head full of loose gravel. He turned to go, when he felt a tug on his pant leg. Looking down, he was surprised to see Jen holding him back.

"Don't leave," she said.

Cloud blinked. "Well, um..." He trailed off as the sentiment was repeated by the other children. "I, uh... can't really stay," he said. "The food..."

"We've got food," said Rix. "We've still got cases of nutrition bars from last time, and lots of bottled water."

That took Cloud by surprise. He hadn't realized he had overstocked the kids. "Um... well, I still need to check on some friends of mine to make sure they're okay."

"Your friends, they were AVALANCHE like you, right? They can handle themselves for a little while, can't they?" Rix's gaze was full of challenge.

Cloud was floored. "Uh..." He had never really talked about his past with the kids, but then again, there was all too much of it that was public knowledge these days.

"Just stay, okay?" Rix asked. "Just for a little while?"

A mixed chorus of child voices asking "Please?" echoed in the pipe, and Cloud slumped, defeated.

"Okay. I'll stay. But just for a little while, and then I need to take off." His announcement was met by cheers and hugs and, as Cloud slid to the pipe floor under a dogpile of enthusiastic children, he wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into.

* * *

Tifa hunched herself over Marlene and Denzel, pulling them close and shielding them from falling debris as best she could as Gold Saucer shivered and rocked with the earthquake. All around them, she could hear the sounds of creaking metal, shattering glass, and above all that, the terrified screams of Gold Saucer employees and tourists alike. To their credit, Marlene and Denzel weren't screaming, but they both clutched at her like a lifeline all the same.

_This whole crazy structure is going to tip over_, she thought. _We're going to tip and crash into the desert below_.

Who the hell had designed this place, anyway? From a distance, Gold Saucer looked like a gaudy alien tree, its various attractions, "squares" and hotels attached like malformed branches to the central pillar. Tifa grit her teeth as she felt that pillar swaying with the quake, and briefly thought about how she'd like to have a few words with the architect, perhaps punctuated with her fists. With everything else that she had gone through over the years, from Sephiroth to Meteor to the Remnants, being crushed in a falling amusement park seemed a particularly stupid way to die...

And then, as suddenly as it started, it was over. The rumbling of the quake died away, and with it the unsettling feeling of being tossed around like a boat in a storm. The sounds of confusion and panic, however, were not so quick to disperse.

"Is it over?" Marlene asked, still pressed against her, though Tifa noticed that the girl didn't sound nearly as frightened as she rightfully should.

"I think so," she answered, not feeling all that certain.

"Great," said Denzel. "Then, do you mind letting go of my shoulder, Tifa? You're kind of squeezing it a little hard."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said, straightening and releasing both children from her protective grip. She took a deep, stabilizing breath. "Are you two okay?"

Marlene nodded, and Denzel grinned. "We're fine," he said. "That was even better than the roller coaster! I wonder if there are going to be any aftershocks."

"Wow," said Marlene, "aftershocks? Do you think they might be as big as the first one?"

Tifa shook her head, perplexed at how well the kids were handling things. "One can only hope," she said, her voice dry. Apparently they had not shared in her fears of death-by-amusement park. "Come on," she said, "I think we should head back to our hotel room and make sure everything is okay."

Marlene stopped in her tracks. "We're not leaving, are we?" she asked.

"No way," Denzel protested. "We've still got a whole week left of vacation! We're not going to let a little earthquake scare us off, right, Tifa?"

_Well, yes, actually_, Tifa wanted to say, but the piteous look on Denzel's face made her bite her tongue. She sighed, looking around. She really wanted to get the hell out of Gold Saucer... but apparently that thought had crossed the minds of quite a few other people as well if the crowds headed for the Station were any indication. She didn't want to get caught up in a crush of panicked people all trying to leave on the tram.

"No, we're not leaving," she said, and the kids cheered. "Yet," she clarified. "I still want to make sure that the ceiling hasn't caved in on our accommodations."

"Fine, fine," Denzel said, mollified. Tifa pretended not to notice as Denzel gave Marlene a gleeful thumbs-up that Marlene happily returned.

_Sheesh_, Tifa thought, unable to help the fond smile on her face. _Kids_.

As they headed back to Ghost Square, the PA system crackled to life, and man who identified himself as the manager of Gold Saucer spoke to the crowds, informing everyone that anyone attempting to leave should do so in a calm, orderly fashion, and that all rides and attractions were suspended until a thorough safety inspection could be completed, and that he already had the best experts handling any repairs and cleanup. Also, free buffet dinners and breakfasts would be available to patrons choosing to stay until inspections were complete.

Well, that was something, Tifa supposed, as they passed several Gold Saucer employees who were already hard at work sweeping up glass and debris. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to stay just a little bit longer after all.

Unless another quake hit. Then they were _so_ out of there.

Tifa thought about calling Cloud to let him know what had happened, but a glance at a nearby wall clock, the flashing neon orange numbers visually screaming the time, changed her mind. She hadn't realized it was already after 8 pm. Midgar was seven hours ahead of Corel Standard Time, which meant it would be after three in the morning there. If by some chance Cloud was sleeping, she didn't want to wake him.

_He gets little enough sleep as it is_. She frowned, trying to push away the little knot of worry in the pit of her stomach that always accompanied that particular thought. It was hard not to notice Cloud's irregular sleeping habits when they lived under the same roof. Or the fact that when he _did_ sleep, his rest seemed anything but restful. He never wanted to talk about it, of course, and that would have bothered her more if it weren't so obvious that he was making a genuine effort to leave the past in the past and not let it drag him down. At least during his waking hours...

Well, the emergency seemed to have passed with no harm done, so she could wait until morning to let Cloud know about their earthquake adventure.

When they made it back to their room, Tifa was relieved to see that there was no apparent damage, so at least they had a little sanctuary where they could hang out until Gold Saucer was back up an running again. As Denzel and Marlene immediately ran to their beds to make use of them as trampolines, she noticed that she had left her PHS on the night stand next to her bed, and that the message light was blinking.

Cloud had apparently called a little while ago. She listened to the voice mail, silently chiding herself over how pleased she felt just hearing his recorded voice. But there had been such a long time when he not only wouldn't call, but he wouldn't answer either. Now he not only called, but he left _voice mail_. This was huge.

"We got a message from Cloud," she said, laughing as that managed to halt both Denzel and Marlene's abuse of the hotel furniture.

"What did he say?" asked Marlene.

"Just that he was back from his delivery, and that if no jobs come in, he'll be joining us in a day or so."

Denzel jumped off the bed with a whoop, and Tifa couldn't help smiling. Earthquake or no, apparently sticking around Gold Saucer for a while wouldn't be so bad after all.

* * *

"Okay," said Cloud, gazing at his opponent with what he hoped was a composed expression. "Let's see what you've got."

Shyla, grinning up at Cloud with a decidedly triumphant look in her eyes, spread out her cards, revealing a Full House. She giggled and scooped up the small pile of gil as Cloud groaned and put his Three of a Kind back into the deck. "You sure you've never played poker before this?"

"Nope! Not until today."

Cloud sighed, and glanced around to see who all had witnessed his latest defeat. Fortunately, aside from Shyla, Rix, and the ever-attentive Jen, most of the other kids were occupied, playing their own games deeper in the pipe.

Cloud had been rather pleased, at first, that Shyla and Rix had picked up on poker rather quickly, since he had discovered that the only thing worse than hanging out in a drainage pipe with a bunch of excited kids was hanging out in a drainage pipe with a bunch of bored kids. However, the fact that they were now beating him approximately four out of five games wasn't doing wonders for his self esteem. He had vague memories of losing a lot in poker when he was playing against a few cadets back when he was in Shinra, but he had always harbored the suspicion that they were somehow cheating; stacking the deck somehow, and playing him for a sucker. So much for that theory. Somehow he doubted that children who had learned the game only a few hours before – and from his own instruction – could develop a cheating system so quickly.

"I suck at this game," he announced, resigned.

"Yeah," Rix agreed, taking the cards and shuffling, "but that's 'cause you give everything away."

Cloud blinked. "What?"

Rix nodded. "We can practically tell what kind of hand you got, just from your expression."

Shyla reached over and smacked Rix upside the head. "Ya moron, don't tell him that! Now he'll be thinking about it."

Cloud looked back and forth between the two kids. "You're saying I've got a lousy poker face."

His tone was so despondent, that even card-shark Shyla couldn't help but give him a sheepish grin. "Yep, pretty much."

Sighing, Cloud looked at the deck in Rix's hands. "Well, I suppose that's better than just having really bad luck," he said, then held up a hand as Rix prepared to deal. "I really need to get going," he said getting to his feet. "But you can keep the cards."

For a moment it looked like Rix was going to argue, but then he shrugged. "Okay," he said, "but come back soon, and be sure to bring some of that Wutai food you mentioned."

Cloud raised an eyebrow. "I thought you said you had plenty of food."

"Yeah, ration bars," Rix said, dismissive, but he was smiling. "Bring us some good stuff for breakfast like you said and I'll even trade you for some good bike parts I found in the ruins by the auto manufacturing factory."

"All right," Cloud conceded, not all that reluctantly. He had planned on dropping off some of the "good stuff" later anyway, but he _had _mentioned getting the kids some breakfast in his earlier escape attempt.

Pushing back the pipe's tarp door, he stepped out into pale, pre-dawn sunlight, and held back a sigh. If the sun was coming up already, that meant going to the church before retrieving breakfast was right out. The kids took priority. Tightening the loose screws in his head would just have to wait.

* * *

_As she stepped out of the cave and into the fading light of day, there was little struggle from Lucrecia - far less than she was expecting. But then, she had been preparing for this moment from the first time Hojo had given the woman an injection of her vibrant cells over half a century ago._

_She was not content to remain as the cursed Ancients had left her. When they discovered the extent of her powers, and her desires to use the energy that manifested in the midst of death and destruction to achieve even greater power, they didn't kill her, foolish pacifists that they were. Rather, they dismembered her, cutting off her arms and legs, mangling her wings and burying her in the frozen wastes, where she lay for two thousand years... waiting._

_And then the humans came. _

_She felt them come, and she reached out to lead them to her. It was delightfully easy. The Ancients were virtually extinct at that point, with only one living female remaining, and that one did not remember the old warnings that had kept those susceptible to her influence away for so long. Her threat had faded into legend. And those that found her - extracted her from stone and ice - thought her not only dead, but one of her old enemies._

_She was content to let them believe that, until Hojo came along - a human who, remarkably, shared her vision of ultimate destruction. She used him, urged him gently, guided him to that very first injection of her cells into his body. And he served her so very well. _

_Even so, it wasn't until a short while before his death at the hands of Cloud and Vincent that she recognized that Hojo's devotion to her was genuine, borne of his own will, and did not require the manipulation she pressed on her other physical hosts. And so it was that, when her efforts to revive Sephiroth through the creation of Remnants was ultimately thwarted once again by Cloud and his companions, she decided that enough was enough._

_She revived Hojo instead._

_The body was simple enough. While he was alive, he was flesh of her flesh, and it was a simple enough matter to rebuild him cell by cell. His mind was a different matter. Unlike Sephiroth, who was constantly under the watchful eye of undiffused Ancients within the Lifestream, Hojo was unguarded. Still, it was with great effort that she wrested him forcefully from the Lifestream while her memetic legacy was still strong enough to disrupt its flow._

_And now, as she stepped from the cave, he was there waiting for her. When she emerged, he knelt before her, worshiping her as the god she would soon become._

_Everything is ready, he said._

_Yes, she replied._

_His helicopter had two human pilots who were not of her flesh, but were there because of what she offered. They gazed at her in awe and terror._

_So very easy to manipulate, these humans. Give them a pretty promise of power, of immortality, and they would trade away their own souls for the honor of groveling at her feet. Two such humans here, but there were more elsewhere, acting in her behalf._

_And as for the ones who fought her, rejected her... well, there were ways of dealing with them._

* * *

The breakfast delivery to the kids was mercifully short. None of the kids insisted that he stay and play with them this time, and Cloud wondered if it was because he was starting to look as haggard as he felt.

Finally, he could go to the church and get some rest.

Or not, he thought dismally, looking at the fuel gauge on his bike. The refined petroleum fuel that Barret and his Corel buddies were concocting might be easier on the Planet than a Mako-fueled engine, but it sure didn't seem to last very long. _Okay_, he thought, rubbing his forehead in the hopes that it might ease the ache building behind his eyes. _So back to 7th Heaven to refuel, then to the church._

The crushed flowers were still on the pavement by the delivery entrance when he pulled up. He deliberately ignored them, and was about to head into the garage to retrieve one of his fuel cans when he saw that a large, flat white envelope had been taped to the back door.

"Great," he muttered as he walked up the stairs and pulled the envelope off the door, feeling decidedly irritable. "What now?" He knew that it was too much to hope for, that this latest anonymous delivery was completely innocuous. Maybe whoever had sent the revenge flowers had graduated to writing angry letters. Well, if so, maybe he'd get a clue about who was behind this.

Exasperated, he unlocked the back door and went in, tearing open the envelope. He paused to close and lock the door behind him. If this was hate mail, and if whoever was behind it was still nearby, he didn't want to read it outside and let his apparently-lousy poker face give the guy any satisfaction. Scowling, he reached in the envelope and pulled out the paper inside, prepared to dump the whole thing in the trash.

It wasn't a letter. It was a photo.

Cloud blinked at it, trying to process what he was seeing.

The small part of him that already understood was screaming at the rest of him to drop it, burn it, destroy it, because that great black well of untouched memory was rising up within him, gaping open...

The Shinra mansion basement. Hojo's lab. A metal table. Strapped to the table, a boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen, Mako blue eyes wide, alert, in agony, because there were knives, and blood, so much blood, and pain and...

A cry wrenched from Cloud's throat as he threw the photo away from him...

...pain and...

... and it hit the wall before falling on the floor, but it was too late, because he could hear screams... bloodcurdling screams, and he recognized those screams as his own voice...

...pain...

...and he was falling, his vision greying as the black abyss of memory swallowed him whole, and there was

_pain, pain, and it lasted forever. He couldn't seem to remember a time without pain. His voice was dead, his throat raw. He would have tasted his own blood, if only Hojo had not cut out his tongue._

_It would grow back eventually. It always did._

_And of course Hojo was not through cutting. In small bursts of agony, he lost his fingers, a little at a time, bit by bit, joint by joint, one by one, until his hands were mere stumps of bloody flesh. His hands would go next, then his arms to the elbow, to the shoulder..._

_...or did that come later? This was the first time Hojo had done this, and yet, he remembered. He knew what was coming._

_But no, not this time. Hojo stopped with the fingers, called an end to the experiment session. How odd. Then, through the red madness of endless pain that filled him, he felt rough hands unclamp the steel restraints and lift his body from the table, only to roughly dump him back into his cylinder prison. He lay, limp and unmoving as the green Mako gas hissed in through the vents in the floor. Too weak to try to hold his breath, the mist burned through his lungs, and he had felt this so many times before. Soon he was once again adrift and floating, and it was almost a relief._..

* * *

To be continued.

A/N: Yes, I am a big enough geek that I divided the FFVII world map into 24 hour time zones so that I could figure out what time it was on different parts of the world when the earthquake hit.


	3. Chapter 3

Jenova Rebirth

A Final Fantasy VII Fic

by Krista Perry

* * *

Chapter 3

* * *

It was after midnight at Gold Saucer when Cait Sith finally finished with the last of the repairs to the arcade games at Wonder Square. He crawled out from under the 3-D Battler platform, carefully so as not to destroy the work he had done to fix the game's shaken innards, then stood up on his hind legs and made a show of dusting himself off with his gloved paws.

"Well?" Lewis, the manager of Wonder Square, stood over him. The man was actually wringing his hands, Cait Sith noticed with no small amount of amusement. Then again, it had been a difficult night for Gold Saucer personnel since the quake had shaken up both delicate equipment and customers alike. "Is it fixed?"

"Aye," Cait Sith said, grinning. "Good as new. Better, even, if I do say so myself. Why don't you fire it up and give it a try?"

Lewis complied, using his manager's pass card to bypass the game's 200 gil fee. His face lit with a relieved smile as the game hummed and a holographic Lewis duplicate appeared on the platform, the programmed opponent appearing opposite his avatar. He turned to Cait Sith, delighted. "Thank you so much," he said. "Without your help tonight, we would have had to wait for a specialist to come over from Junon. You've saved us so much in recovery time alone."

"Eh, it's no trouble," Cait Sith said, looking at the game and suppressing a wince as Lewis' unresisting avatar proceeded to get pummeled by its computer-controlled nemesis. "Glad to help. If there's anything else I can do..."

But, thankfully, it seemed as though his usefulness as a conscripted repairman had come to an end. Cait Sith decided to beat a hasty retreat before the manager, or anyone else, for that matter, discovered something else in need of fixing after the quake. He didn't mind helping out, but now he was more than ready to do something a little more... fun.

Accessing the blueprints in his memory that Reeve had given to him on his very first mission, before he had ever even set foot in Gold Saucer, Cait Sith quickly found a small, narrow air vent, far from prying eyes, that would lead him exactly where he wanted to go... but when he got there, he discovered that the vent cover was bolted to the wall. Undeterred, Cait Sith removed the glove from his right front paw, extended one long, thin, diamond-sharp claw, and slipped it between the wall and the flat lip of the cover. The metal wasn't very sturdy, so he was able to slice through the bolts quickly and silently, and soon he was crawling through the small, dark passage to the central control room in the center of the main Gold Saucer pillar. The cover of his exit was bolted to the wall as well, but his little bolt-slicing trick worked just as well from inside the vent. Before he exited the vent, he removed his gloves, boots, cape and crown – a detriment, sadly, to sneaking around unnoticed.

Gold Saucer's central control room was large, and crammed with computers, monitors, and Gold Saucer employees, all absorbed in security and quake damage control. It was easy to slip into shadows and under desks unnoticed. He was always careful to wait until he knew he couldn't be seen even by someone's peripheral vision. Nothing tended to spook humans quite as much as seeing something move out of the corner of their eye, only to turn and see nothing there. And he intended this to be an "in-out-none-the-wiser" jaunt.

It wasn't long before he found the perfect spot to set up shop – a small crawl space under a desk that was up against a wall and right next to one of the main computers. Once there, and once he felt secure that no one had seen him, he touched his chest, felt under his fur for the pressure lock, and opened the small compartment in his chest cavity where he kept his hacking wires. He pulled out the thinnest, strongest cord. Dio, the manager-in-absentia of Gold Saucer, currently holidaying at Costa del Sol and no doubt parading around in his speedo, was proud of making sure his control center computers were always technically up to date. For this, Cait Sith was grateful. It always made things so much easier than trying to thump around inside ancient technology.

Plugging in was always a bit disorienting. One moment, Cait Sith was himself, a small black and white feline artificial life form living inside his own head, and the next, his consciousness was spread out across a virtual network. It only took a moment to adjust – he had essentially been born and raised in digital reality before Reeve finally made him a body, after all. Looking around at the Gold Saucer network, Cait Sith realized that, while Dio might have the best in computer technology, he needed better engineers. The security was laughable, at least compared to Shinra standards, and he slipped through firewalls and dodged tracer and anti-intruder programs with ease.

First things first. He absorbed all the damage and security reports, and was pleased to discover that most of the damage Gold Saucer had sustained would be easily fixed within hours. The chocobos, while initially distressed by the quake, had been calmed by their jockeys, and none of them had been injured. That was a relief. As for the other attractions, only the roller coaster was offline for an indeterminate amount of time. Disappointing to be sure, but also expected.

Also unsurprising – almost two-thirds of Gold Saucer's extended-stay patronage had checked out of the Ghost Hotel early, choosing to leave rather than wait for repairs. Of those that stayed...

If Cait Sith had been in his body at that moment, he would have gaped. Tifa Lockheart and two guests were listed on the hotel registry. _Tifa is here, _he thought, gleeful. He would definitely have to pay her a visit. The two unnamed guests were most likely Denzel and Marlene. Cait Sith felt practically giddy. He hadn't seen any of his friends in person since parting ways shortly after the whole Sephiroth Remnant mess in Edge months ago. _But where is Cloud? _he wondered. _That boy had better not be off hiding from us again..._

Well, hopefully Tifa would have an answer for that. In the meantime, he still had business to attend to.

The satellite network uplink was the most secure thing in the whole system, he discovered. No doubt Dio had made sure that guests would need to pay for their wireless net access instead of hitching a free ride. Cait Sith quickly forged himself a password, slipped through... and now all the networks on the Planet spread before him. All he had to do was pick one and dive in.

It was still a little strange, he mused, having more than one network to deal with. Before Meteor, Shinra had the monopoly on what had been simply the Network. Now, however, the biggest network belonged to the WRO, thanks to Reeve. Shinra had their own network up and running again, but it was a pale shadow of what it used to be. There were also dozens of little private citizen-owned networks springing up through the digital world, and growing like weeds.

Whenever he went out like this, he always saved WRO for last, simply because he knew he was welcome there. It was always more fun to go where you weren't wanted. So he hit the Shinra network first to see if anything new was going on.

He was met with the usual resistance, but he had plenty of practice pretending to be Shinra, so it was easy to make himself seem like he belonged, even if he didn't. _That's right_, he thought, weaving through the layers of encryption that at first hesitated, then welcomed him like an old friend. _You know me, I'm one of you. Just another part of the program._

And now that he was in... wow, it was... _boring_. Same old same old, as it had been for the past two years. Rufus Shinra was still covertly sending money to various WRO organizations through various non-Shinra companies, big surprise.

_This whole money thing between Rufus and Reeve is just downright ludicrous_, Cait Sith thought. _Rufus sends the WRO his money, pretending that it doesn't come from him, perhaps because he thinks it might be unwelcome, and Reeve accepts it and pretends he doesn't know that it comes from Shinra. And Rufus pretends that he doesn't know that Reeve knows and is pretending not to know. Et cetera, ad nauseam. And in the meantime, Rufus quietly rebuilds Shinra with the help of the Turks and old employees who came back or never left, while Reeve and the WRO keep a suspicious, uneasy eye on their progress, all while trying to stay at least one step ahead._

Cait Sith was disgusted over all the silly pointless games between the two men and their organizations... but not so disgusted that he missed the Shinra probe that suddenly emerged from a user portal and shot past him, leaving the Shinra network and heading for parts unknown.

Not unknown for long, Cait Sith decided, and he followed the Shinra probe, swift as thought, unsurprised when it headed straight for the WRO network.

Much of the WRO network was open, but there were also high security areas protected by Reeve's personal encryption. Cait Sith stayed back and watched as the probe grew tendril-like feelers that poked and prodded at every surface of the encryption, looking for weakness and not finding any. It only took a few moments of this before Cait Sith became bored, and intervened.

He stepped into the probe's path, pleased that the feelers actually shriveled where it made contact with him. _That's right_, he said, and with a flick of will, he shoved the probe right out of the WRO network. _Go back and report _that_, why don't you._

So, what information was Shinra after? He turned towards Reeve's encryption, the gleaming barrier of black ice glinting as he approached. He reached out and touched it, and it yielded to him, flowing around him like liquid, allowing him entrance.

When he was in, he absorbed everything in moments. All of Reeve's communications, phone calls, emails, buried Shinra documents, voice mails to old friends, all since the quake...

All of this information instantly entered his mind and was thrown into sharp relief against his own knowledge and experience. Memories of visiting that cave, where the earthquake had originated, two years previous; of finding former Shinra scientist Lucrecia Crescent, unable to die because of the Jenova within her, encased in crystal; of her devastating effect on Vincent, not the least of which was awakening Chaos within him...

And then Cait Sith was out, leaving WRO, the satellite connection, flinging himself back into Gold Saucer's computers, and out...

Cait Sith blinked as he once again found himself occupying space in the physical world. He took a breath, because it seemed appropriate, and unplugged himself from the computer. As he put the wires back into his chest compartment, and his mind churned over everything he had just downloaded, one thought held sway.

_I have to warn the others._

* * *

Tseng stood as Professor Malcome came into his office with a sizable stack of paperwork in his hands. "Is this everything?" he asked.

Malcome nodded. "Blasted inconvenient to have to write it all out by hand," he said irritably.

Tseng raised an eyebrow. "How far did your latest probe attempt make it into WRO's encryption?"

The professor had the decency to look abashed. "Couldn't even scratch it," he said. "It got sent back completely corrupted, and attached was an animated hand shaking its finger at me."

Tseng managed to suppress an amused snort. "This," he said, "is precisely why we are keeping our records on paper at the moment. Until you or one of your colleagues can manage to provide us with network encryption that is stronger than what the WRO is using, we can assume that ours can be easily compromised."

Malcome frowned. Apparently, Tseng surmised from the man's expression, the thought of trying to match and even outpace Reeve's programming was daunting to say the least. He was proved correct when the professor said, "If only Reeve hadn't defected to the other side, we wouldn't be in this mess."

"Reeve is not on 'the other side,' as you put it," Tseng said mildly. "Shinra and the WRO have the same goals, after all. We are both working to save the Planet. Our methods simply... differ slightly."

The professor barked a laugh. "'Slightly.' Right." He slapped the paperwork down on Tseng's desk. "Enjoy," he said, turning to leave. "I need to get back to work."

Tseng let the man go without further comment, and then pulled the paperwork toward him and began to go through it, page by page. Malcome wasn't wrong; it was damned inconvenient to do things this way, especially since most of the people in the Science and Research division had terrible handwriting.

After a half hour of headache-inducing reading, he stood and headed to the President's office.

Rufus Shinra's current accommodations were far more modest than they had been before Meteor, but that wasn't the only thing that had changed. While the President was still as ambitious as ever, he had chosen to channel his energies into less self-aggrandizing causes.

The President looked up as he entered, then leaned forward expectantly. "Yes?"

"I have a report from the S&R division, sir. In the past few hours – since the earthquake, as a matter of fact – the cell samples taken from Jenova's head have shown sudden, measurable growth."

The President's expression barely flickered. "I see," he said. "Is the containment holding?"

"For now," Tseng replied.

"And the WRO?"

"All their latest communications are encrypted, but some of their troops are beginning to mobilize."

Rufus Shinra sat, his face inscrutable. "Reno and Rude are still at the Icicle Inn, I presume?" he said at last.

"Yes, sir."

"I'm afraid they will have to cut their vacation short. It's time to gather the Turks."

"Yes, sir."

"And keep me immediately updated on any further developments."

Tseng bowed slightly. "Yes, sir."

* * *

Cid didn't usually mind silence when he took the _Shera_ out flying, but that was when he didn't have any passengers. When Cid had flown to the Forgotten City and had brought Vincent aboard, the taciturn man had thanked him for coming on such short notice and asked him to reach their destination "with all due haste." And he hadn't spoken a word since.

The silence was damn oppressive.

But Cid knew better than to try and engage Vincent in conversation under the circumstances. When a man called you up out of the blue and asked you to take him to investigate the source of the earthquake at the very cave where Sephiroth's Jenova-filled mom had sealed herself in crystal – and when you knew damn well that the guy had feelings for the crazy chick – you didn't start prying even when curiosity was gnawing at you like a starving dog.

The crater was just like he remembered – a ring of precariously steep mountains sloping down into a lake so deep that it connected to the ocean a few hundred miles away through an underwater corridor. And on the northern bank of the lake, the cave gaped, like a black, lipless mouth.

He brought the _Shera_ in as close to the bank as he could, then glanced sidelong at where Vincent stood, looking down at the cave through the clear thermoplastic windows of the observation deck. "This is it," he said, chewing at the end of his unlit cigarette, and he jerked his thumb back to the jump door at the back of the craft. "Use the rappelling rope. No jumping out freestyle, not here," he said, leaving it at that and trusting that Vincent had the sense not to argue. The guy might have the ability to jump back into a moving aircraft without aid, but he was going alone into an unknown and potentially dangerous situation. Better safe than sorry, and all that shit.

Vincent nodded once, turned, and walked to the back of the aircraft. Cid felt the blast of air hit his back as the jump door opened, but he held the _Shera_ steady, and watched as Vincent rappelled to the ground below, his red cape and black hair whipping about in the downdraft of the _Shera's_ propellers. Vincent approached the mouth of the cave and stopped just before the entrance, bending on one knee and reaching to touch the ground. Cid frowned. Whatever Vincent was examining, Cid couldn't see it.

Finally, Vincent straightened and entered the cave without hesitation, and Cid felt a little knot of apprehension in the pit of his stomach as his friend disappeared into the darkness. Nothing good had ever happened to that poor bastard when he had gone into that cave, and somehow Cid had the feeling this time would not be the exception.

It seemed like forever before Vincent finally emerged again, apparently none the worse for wear, and Cid let out a breath of relief. He lit a match with a flick of his thumbnail, lit his cigarette, pinched the match out with his fingers, and took a nice, long pull as Vincent made his way back. It wasn't long before he heard the jump door close and felt the pressure of the wind off his back.

Vincent walked up and stood next to him, his pale face unreadable.

"Well?" Cid asked. "What's the verdict?"

"She's gone," Vincent replied.

"Gone?" Cid frowned and looked down at the cave. "What, she just up and left?"

Vincent held out his right hand. A crystal shard lay in his palm. "The crystal is shattered, completely destroyed," he said.

"The earthquake." Cid clenched his teeth on his cig. "Damn. Well, I didn't want to think it, but now we have to, whether we want to or not," he said, deliberately including Vincent in his "we." "The big question now is, when she left that cave, was she still Lucrecia?"

Vincent looked at him sharply, amber eyes blazing, but Cid just glared right back. "Don't tell me it hasn't occurred to you," he said. "Otherwise, what's the big damn hurry to get here?"

Vincent lowered his gaze, then turned and looked down at the cave below. "It... has occurred to me," he conceded. "I have often wondered if she sealed herself in that cave to escape the world... or to protect it."

Cid nodded. "Right." He was glad that Vincent wasn't in denial about the situation, at least. That certainly made things less problematic. "The next big question – where the hell did she go?"

"Wherever she went," Vincent said, "she is not alone."

Cid looked at him, startled. "What?"

"There are footprints approaching the cave. The print and size indicate a man wearing flat soled work shoes. Lucrecia's footprints emerge from the cave, and it seems the two of them walked a short way before disappearing. I presume there was some sort of aircraft waiting, since the prints did not approach the lake."

"Well, shit," Cid said. He took a deep drag from his cig and blew the smoke out his nose. "That complicates things a bit. Someone knew this was going to happen and, what, came to pick her up?"

"It seems so," Vincent agreed, his voice flat and cold.

"Who?"

"I do not know."

"Huh." This was bad, Cid thought, no question about that. "Well," he said, "that brings us back to the question of where the hell she went."

Vincent was silent for a long moment, looking down at the cave. "If she is still Lucrecia," he said finally, "and... perhaps even if she is not... then I can think of only one place she would go." He looked back at Cid. "Nibelheim."

"Damn it all." Cid gripped the airship's helm and guided her back into the open sky, pointing her in a northwesterly direction. "Figured you might say that. That town is as creepy as hell, but it's as good a place to start looking as any." He mashed the stub of his cigarette into the nearby ashtray, and flipped a new one into the corner of his mouth. "You'd better let Reeve know what we found," he said.

Vincent nodded, reached underneath his cloak to retrieve his phone, flipped it open, and made the call.

_Nibelheim, _Cid thought. _Bloody hell._

* * *

Reeve was in the second floor bedroom of the Shinra Mansion throwing the last of his clean clothes into a suitcase, and wondering how on earth he was going to coax Klunk into the cat carrier for the helicopter ride to Costa del Sol. The poor feline had made himself scarce the moment he had pulled the carrier out of storage. Reeve was about to try to lure Klunk out with a dried fish treat he had been saving for the occasion, when two things happened almost simultaneously: First, his PHS rang, and second, the perimeter alarm he had set around the outskirts of the mansion grounds went off in the foyer downstairs.

He cursed under his breath as he reached for his phone. He hoped the alarm had been set off by a rabbit or something equally innocuous, and not one of the Kyuvilduns that liked to wander down from Mt. Nibel. He had a mastered Fire materia on hand for such incidents, but the giant mosquito-like monsters were still a thorough pain in the ass.

All such thoughts were banished as he saw who was calling. He answered before the phone could ring a second time. "Vincent," he said, "what news?"

He sat down heavily on the bed as he listened to Vincent's report.

So, it was just as he feared.

And then Vincent said something that made his heart stutter in his chest. "Wait," Reeve said. "You think she may be coming here?" He thought of the proximity alarm that was still going off downstairs.

Vincent was silent for a moment on the other end of the line. "Where are you, exactly?" he asked.

"The Shinra Mansion," Reeve said, standing and edging toward the bedroom window. "I've been here for a few months working on a solar battery prototype."

"Do you have WRO personnel with you?"

"I'm alone," he said grimly, reaching for the edge of the curtain, "with my cat."

"Reeve." The dismay he heard in Vincent's voice surprised him. "You need to get out of there immediately."

Reeve pulled back the curtain a crack and peered out at the Shinra Mansion grounds. The window was caked in grime, but he could still see the four people walking past the mansion's wrought iron gate and up the path that led into the mountains. In the lead, a woman, unmistakably Lucrecia Crescent. Even if he hadn't seen her in the cave through Cait Sith's eyes, he recognized her from her old Shinra personnel files. She was followed by a man in a white lab coat, and two young men carrying firearms.

"It's too late," Reeve said, "she's here." And as he spoke, Lucrecia stopped in her tracks, looked over at the mansion and, turning to the man in the lab coat, pointed at his window. Startled, Reeve dropped the curtain and stepped back, but not before the man in the lab coat looked directly at him.

Reeve felt numb with shock. It had been over two years, but he would know that face anywhere.

Immediately, Reeve felt his old Shinra instincts kick in, pushing through the numbness, forcing him into action. He stepped boldly to the window and pulled back the curtain. The jig was up, so he might as well get a good look at exactly what he was dealing with.

Lucrecia was continuing up the mountain path without a backward glance, but Hojo and the two armed young men were coming through the iron gate to the mansion. Hojo looked up and grinned as Reeve locked gazes with him, before Reeve turned away and quickly went to open the passage in the stone wall of the bedroom. If Hojo and his men were going to try to come in right through the front door, the traps he had laid to discourage both human and monster interlopers might buy him some time.

It was only when he went to climb down the ladder to the basement labs that he realized his phone was still in his hand, and that Vincent was calling his name, trying to get a response from him.

"Sorry," Reeve said into his phone, "I'll call you right back." He snapped his phone shut and practically slid down the ladder. As he did, he heard the front doors of the mansion open, and the expulsion hiss of his materia-supported sleep gas, followed by the satisfying thump of bodies hitting the floor.

Reeve paused long enough to hear a lone set of footsteps continue across the floor. Damn. Well, he figured it was too much to hope for, that Hojo would be affected by the gas. Jenova wasn't likely to resurrect someone with such an obvious weakness. He rushed down the long stone corridor, past the old coffin room where he had stashed all of Hojo's equipment, grateful that he had possessed foresight enough to replace the door with something a bit more impenetrable than the old, rotting wood. If Hojo wanted his stuff back, he would be hard pressed to break Reeve's security codes.

Once in the lab, Reeve sealed the door behind him, then went to the monitors for the security cameras he had set up to keep track of the mansion upstairs on the off chance that a wandering monster managed to slip past his security. He didn't want to be taken by surprise after a long day's work, dragging himself to bed only to discover too late that a Ghirofelgo had taken up residence in his room. Well, Hojo was far worse than any pendulum-riding mako monster, and now Reeve could keep track of exactly where he was.

The security cameras showed the foyer where the two men were laid out, unconscious, and found Hojo slowly climbing the stairs, hunched over, his hands clasped behind his back.

Feeling a bit more secure in the sealed lab, Reeve kept his eyes on the monitors, pulled out his PHS and called Vincent.

"Reeve," Vincent said, his voice so devoid of emotion that it somehow perfectly communicated just how upset he was.

"Sorry about that," Reeve said, "but I have company, and I had to get to a secure location. Hojo is here."

Silence. Then, hoarsely, Vincent said, "Hojo is dead."

"Not any more."

"Cloud and I killed him."

"I know. I saw. But apparently it didn't take, because I'm looking at him right now. He just went into the room with the secret passage to the basement labs, where I am currently holed up."

Okay, so he was being flippant, but if he gave himself any time to really think about it, he would be too scared to function, and that would be bad.

"Where is Lucrecia?" Vincent asked.

"The last I saw, she was headed up the mountain path that leads to the reactor."

There was silence for a moment, and then Vincent said, "Cid says we'll be there in about 20 minutes. Try not to die in the meantime."

Reeve was going to say that he would do his best, but the line had already gone dead.

And Hojo... what was he doing? Not coming down the ladder to the basement, Reeve was surprised to see, but rather, just... looking around. Hojo left the bedroom and walked down the hall, going into the study. He stood there for a moment, tilting his head, almost as if listening. Then he turned, left the room, and headed for the other wing of the mansion with that same, plodding, patient walk.

Reeve felt a chill shiver across his flesh. Somehow, this was worse than just watching Hojo head straight for him. What was he doing? Was it possible that Hojo didn't realize he was in the basement lab?

Hojo went into the atrium and again stood silently before turning and going into the second bedroom. This time, instead of turning and leaving, Hojo went to the bed by the window, knelt down next to it, and suddenly Reeve understood.

"No," he said, more of a pained groan than a word, as he watched Hojo reach under the bed and pull out his cat by the scruff of his neck. Klunk was obviously terrified, hanging stiff in Hojo's grasp, the fur on his back and tail sticking straight out, his wide eyes almost completely black with fear.

Hojo turned and looked directly into the security camera, holding Klunk by the scruff with one hand and wrapping his other hand around the cat's neck. "Reeve," he said, and his smile was oily. "Old friend. Why don't you come out so we can do some catching up, eh? It's been so long."

Reeve felt cold and sick.

_I am not really going to put my own life in jeopardy for the sake of an animal, am I?_ he thought. _Even for an animal that has been my companion for over ten years. That would be crazy. Utterly insane._

But apparently he was crazy - genuine Third-Tier Shinra crazy, he thought - because he was already out the lab door and halfway down the stone corridor.

By the time he had climbed the ladder, Hojo was standing in the bedroom doorway, waiting for him, still smiling.

"Well, I'm here," Reeve said, with far more bravado than he actually felt. "Let the cat go and we'll talk."

Hojo laughed and dropped Klunk, who scrambled away as fast as he could. "Oh, Reeve, you never change. So sentiment–"

Reeve threw a third level Fire spell at him.

Hojo staggered back with a cry, and Reeve could smell flesh and hair burning. _Threaten my cat, will you? Take that, you son of a bitch._

But there was no time to waste on gloating. Before the flames that engulfed Hojo completely faded, Reeve rushed forward, planted his boot in Hojo's stomach, and pushed. Hojo went sprawling into the hallway. With a speed fueled by desperation, Reeve sprinted past Hojo, heading for the stairs.

Hojo's hand flashed out and grabbed his ankle in a grip so strong that Reeve could have sworn he felt the bones grinding together. He hit the wooden floor of the landing hard and felt the air press out of his lungs with the impact. He lay, gasping, unable to move even when Hojo released his ankle. _This_, he thought with grim amusement,_ is why I usually send Cait Sith to fight my battles._ He was struggling to get to his hands and knees when he felt Hojo's foot in the small of his back. Hojo stepped down, and Reeve was pinned, his lower spine screaming from the unbelievable pressure.

Hojo heaved a dramatic sigh."Is this what we're reduced to? Here we are, former comrades, both of us _scientists_, brawling like street thugs." Hojo knelt, his foot still firmly planted in Reeve's back. "She wanted me to kill you, you know," he said softly. "But I couldn't bear it. One of the finest intellects of our generation, extinguished simply because you are an interfering busybody? No. I convinced her, there are so many more practical uses for that fine mind of yours. So she said I could have you. Oh, we're going to have such fun, you and I."

"I'd rather..." Reeve managed, still working to suck air back into his lungs. "...that you killed me."

Hojo threw back his head and laughed, loud and long. "Oh, Reeve," he said, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. "That's what they _all_ say."

* * *

_The way to Mount Nibel was familiar to her. She had seen it through the eyes of her first true son of this world, just over seven years ago, as she had beckoned him to her. When Sephiroth had traversed this path that final time, eagerly following the call of her summons, the teeming masses of mako-mutated monsters had stayed well away, sensing the power within him. Her power._

_The monsters stayed away now, as she crossed the swaying suspension bridge and made her way through the natural caverns of raw mako. This body, while not yet fully hers, was now far more hers than it was the woman's whose mind she had inexorably pulled down into the abyss. The body was hers, and soon, she would shed the last of the human taint and be whole once again._

_The reactor was dark as she approached; shut down, but not dismantled. She knew that Reeve had kept this last Mako reactor functional for the sake of his alternate energy source research. As she grew close, lights flickered on, generators groaned and hummed to life._

_This was her place, where her power had been restored; supplemented and increased by the processed lifeblood of the planet._

_She walked past steel pipes and tubes; crossed the catwalk where seven years ago, sixteen-year-old Cloud, skewered straight through with Masamune, still managed to find the strength to get to his feet, lift Sephiroth by the very sword that had him pinned, and fling both her son and her severed head into the Mako below. Suitable then that, out of all the surviving inhabitants of Nibelheim that Hojo had used in his experiments, only Cloud turned out to be worthy enough to endure her symbiotic presence._

_At the time, however, she had ignored him, for Sephiroth had been hers, and she needed no other. She let Sephiroth play with the boy for a while, since it seemed to amuse him, and it lent him the treasured illusion of control; but in the end, her indulgence cost Sephiroth his life. Cloud was not as easily controlled. He broke free from her illusions and destroyed Sephiroth in the depths of the Lifestream._

_But soon, even that miscalculation would at last be rectified._

_She entered the adjacent room, still painted blood red, still full of Hojo's containment pods, where he conducted mako experiments on human subjects. And up the stairs through the pods, her scarlet door. It swung open as she approached, and closed behind her as she walked through._

_The cylinder that once held her was broken, of course; smashed by Sephiroth to obtain her head so long ago. She stepped over the shattered glass, shedding her clothes as she went, until she stood naked in the center of the broken cylinder._

_Deep within the reactor, engines rumbled. The hiss and gurgle of viscous liquid moving through long-empty tubes announced the arrival of the Mako, and it began burbling up through the holes in the cylinder floor, lapping around her bare feet. Without the cylinder to contain it, the glowing green fluid spilled out across the floor. She waited, standing still, feeling the burn of it against her skin as it quickly filled the room, rising up to her knees, her thighs, her waist... She withstood the temptation to sit and submerge herself. She had waited two thousand years for this; she could wait a few minutes more and do it without lowering herself to such a human impulse._

_When the Mako rose over her head, she opened her mouth and breathed it in, filling her lungs, welcoming the burning within as well as without. As the Mako filled the sealed room, and the holes in the cylinder floor closed, she raised her arms above her head, and began the process. The Mako was power, and she knew how to use it. _

_Her body flared with blinding blue light, and she rose from the floor. The Mako that surrounded her vanished in a flash as she pulled it into her, made it part of her. And with that power, she purged the last bit of humanity from the flesh._

_Light still blazing from her skin, she hung suspended in mid air, back arched, and voiced a cry, high and in her own old language - words she hadn't spoken since before she came to this world. Straightening and crossing her arms over her chest, she then bowed forward. The muscle and skin of her back seemed to ripple and bulge before great silvered wings burst from her back, the feathers damp with blood and membrane. The wings flexed, stretched... and slowly, she settled to the floor. The light faded from her skin, revealing blue-toned flesh. Long silver hair fell to her waist. Her eyes blazed like two stars set in a face that was beautiful, yet bore little resemblance to the human woman whose body this once was._

And, for the first time in two millennia... Jenova smiled.

* * *

A/N: I had two more scenes planned for this chapter, but I couldn't fit them in without disrupting the flow of the story. So now those two scenes will open chapter 4. Coming soon to a fanfiction website near you!


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